


keep the light on, honey

by Memelock



Series: the world's latest sylvain and felix week project [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Exes to Lovers, M/M, dorothea and ingrid are getting married but somehow they're not the main focus, is that even a thing?, lots of other people mentioned but i tagged the speaking roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24345034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock
Summary: Ingrid looks guilty when she answers the FaceTime call, and that’s Felix’s first inkling that something is wrong.//Ingrid and Dorothea aren’t exactly plotting in this, but they certainly do use their upcoming wedding as leverage to accomplish a seemingly impossible task.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: the world's latest sylvain and felix week project [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747060
Comments: 12
Kudos: 143





	keep the light on, honey

**Author's Note:**

> this is for day five of my just… so late… contribution to sylvain/felix week because they’ve given me total brainrot. still. i picked the “enemies to lovers” theme but i don’t know how to do enemies so — exes? :) i hope you like it! title is from “running back to you” by for the foxes.

“It’s because I have high expectations that I’m trusting you with this.”

Dorothea’s sentiment, sweet and touching under other circumstances, fails to penetrate Felix’s defenses this time in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, he continues to let her drag him around the store looking at the same three pairs of shoes over and over again, because there are two things Dorothea knows she can rely on Felix for: the right kind of fashion advice and the right taste in music, both of which are at play in this conversation.

“I don’t want to disappoint,” Felix offers, folding his arms over his chest. “And I still think the black is the optimal choice.”

“You could never disappoint me, Felix. Not in this area, at least. I’m in the industry and I still feel like you introduce me to half of what I listen to.” Dorothea frowns, eyes flicking back and forth between the black and yellow, the floral at last forgotten by the wayside. “I just can’t stop thinking about that article that called my style _safe_.”

Felix’s _hmmph_ is loud enough to hear over the music piping tinnily from the store speakers. “Pitchfork only hires idiots,” he offers as consolation. “Get the black and let the music speak for itself.”

“How poetic of you,” she teases, but she picks up the black anyway. “So will you do it? One of Ingrid’s friends will be helping too, so it’s not just on you.”

“That might actually be worse, depending on who it is,” Felix says, and because he’s looking thoughtfully at the yellow shoes he misses Dorothea’s fleeting look of guilt. She stifles it quickly enough either way, there’s no space for that in her life. “But all right, since you asked and since you and Ingrid stupidly decided to try to plan your wedding while you’re on tour.”

“My favorite of your many good qualities is your kindness,” she says, and the card she buys the shoes with is as black as the platforms themselves.

* * *

Ingrid looks guilty when she answers the FaceTime call, and that’s Felix’s first inkling that something is wrong.

“Hey,” he says, somewhere between a question and an accusation. “I’m supposed to be asking you which of your lucky friends I should be contacting about handling the music.”

“Uh,” Ingrid, who never hesitates when she speaks, says. “Yeah. I’ll give you the number. You could have just texted.”

Felix shrugs, cutting the street behind him out of the view of the camera for a second. “I’m just walking back from the station,” he explains. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

“Thanks,” Ingrid says, flat as a pancake. “Nice to know where my wedding lands on your priority list.”

“I don’t have to work with _you_ on the music, right? Just give me the damn number,” Felix says. He opens the Contacts app which means he can’t see Ingrid’s camera trembling with her hands. “I’m ready.”

She reads it off slowly, painfully slowly, like he’s pulling out a tooth for each digit. The area code is the one most of his friends and coworkers are in, so he’s not surprised it’s trying to autocomplete, and the next three numbers aren’t uncommon in the area so some matches there isn’t unexpected either. But then.

“Two,” Ingrid says, and Felix could swear she stammers over the word. But he types it. “Five,” she says, almost three full seconds later, so much more than enough time to type one number into a phone, and Felix is starting to get scared or angry or both alongside a few other things for good measure because there’s just one persistent autocomplete left.

“Ingrid,” he says, a steel pipe of a word, and she gulps audibly.

“He’s the only other person Dorothea would okay for it.” She trips over her own tongue getting the words out quickly, all that taking less time to say than eight numbers. “Look, I’m sorry.” She pauses then. She doesn’t bother to read the rest of the digits. They both know them, by heart still even after years of trying to forget. “I thought things were… okay between you two.”

Felix frowns at that, and he’s glad that Ingrid can’t see him while the call is still backgrounded. In theory, things are okay between him and Sylvain. The breakup is, again, years in the rearview mirror. The friend cluster survives, even if they ones they have mutually usually have to split their time between the two of them like they’re the group’s divorced parents. Things are okay between them because they have to be, but Felix can’t help but feel that things are closer to just being… nothing. He closes the Contacts app and wipes the wrinkles from between his brows. Ingrid looks hopeful, which is even worse than disappointed or angry because that means she has expectations for him to live up to. He shrugs again, a third rise and fall of his shoulders, meaningless as he puts his key into the front door of his complex. “Sure,” he says, and then he hangs up.

* * *

Reaching out to Sylvain via text is a mistake, because once again Felix’s phone’s autocomplete functionality works too well, an exercise in karmic unbalancing thanks to a contact and records that should have been deleted a long time ago. The last message is from a year and a half in the past, and Felix doesn’t need the physical reminder of the words on the screen because he sometimes sees them written on the insides of his eyelids when he tries to sleep, on the nights after a long day at work or a particularly thorny therapy session or just an errand that brings him past too many people with dark hair shot through with grey and tired eyes and a mouth that looks unsmiling.

_Hey, I’m sure I’m the last person you want to hear from, but I heard about your dad. I’m sorry, I know things were complicated. You can call me if you need anything._

That’s not quite the last message, though, which maybe hurts worse because the last one actually goes like this, sent moments later:

_Just realized you probably deleted my number. It’s Sylvain. I’m sorry Felix._

Felix had not deleted the number, still hasn’t now out of what he hopes is sheer laziness and the will for normalcy rather than misguided hope or impossible dream. As he types he imagines Sylvain, although it’s hardly likely that he’s also looking at this message thread (he’s probably deleted it), seeing the bubble pop up, dots animating into words as he sends the message. It’s brief, and he learns from Sylvain’s almost-mistake.

_Hi, it’s Felix. We should meet up about the music for Ingrid and Dorothea’s thing. Let me know what works._

As he lies in bed that night, waiting for sleep to claim him after a restless run fails to calm his mind, he wonders if he might have called eighteen months ago. But he didn’t and now he has Dr. Cichol to listen to his problems and coach him through any attempt at feeling something besides overwhelmed so there’s no point in wondering anymore.

The message he wakes up to is timestamped from somewhere around 2:00 AM, “real Sylvain hours” as he and Ingrid and the boar used to say in high school. Some things don’t change.

_Yeah, I heard about that. Sorry, I promise I didn’t know it would be you when I told Ingrid I’d do it. Wednesday night is good for me, otherwise let me know when you’re free._

His spelling is better than Felix remembers from the other kind of late night/early morning texts Sylvain used to send him, the flirty ones from early on, the tragic ones from the Miklan days on the beat up flip phone Ingrid used to tease him about, the painful ones from right after the breakup. He’s clearly trying to keep the tentative peace because he doesn’t comment on Felix referring to the wedding as a “thing”, and so in a reciprocal extension of the olive branch, Felix agrees to Wednesday.

* * *

It’s not as painful as he expects it to be, seeing Sylvain again on the grounds of a neutral third party, a cocktail bar the group used to go to that’s known for being unpopular. Perfect for an initial conversation after years of relative silence. Felix gets there first, because he’s always been the punctual one, and orders water and one gin and tonic with lime. He needs a little liquor to get through this but distinctly does not need it to turn into a shitshow, and luckily he’s only had time for a sip and no more than three pictures to scroll past on Instagram before Sylvain slides in across from him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, and Felix kind of hates the miserable familiarity of the first thing passing between them being an apology. “Hi,” he adds like an afterthought.

The lopsided grin Sylvain sends across the table via express messenger is familiar, bone-deep and heavy with memory. There’s a few component pieces, though, that look different from the recollections that float up — the hair dusted over Sylvain’s jaw and chin, topped with a mustache that Felix hates but looks good no matter his personal feelings, the tortoiseshell glasses, rounded and dorky, that do nothing to lessen the intensity of his brown eyes, the scar over his brow on the left side that might match up with a broken glass or a particularly fierce fingernail. Already Felix imagines and discards asking about it.

“Hi,” he says instead. “You should know I’m not mad about this. I want to help Dorothea and Ingrid.”

Sylvain nods. Maybe the glasses aren’t so dorky, Felix thinks as their conversation pauses for the waiter to ask Sylvain, flustered, if he can get him anything. Anything at all. Sylvain’s smile is easy and charming as ever, crinkling his eyes a little deeper into crows’ feet, bringing dark circles into slightly sharper relief behind the frames, and he orders water with lemon and a whiskey highball. It feels like a hundred times before, but Sylvain doesn’t turn back to Felix and wink and ask if he’s jealous, and Felix doesn’t have to lie and say no anymore because there’s nothing to be jealous of.

He does turn back though. “I want to help too,” Sylvain says. “You probably know, but I’m not mad either. I’m kind of happy to see you again.” He pauses. The water arrives at light speed and he plays with the lemon on the rim. “Is that weird?”

“No,” Felix says. He has to think about it for a moment, but it’s not weird at all. Maybe they’re just older and wiser, maybe it’s knowing they’re working together for a worthy cause, but Felix is somewhere in the neighborhood of happy too. He’s at least not unhappy, which is good enough these days.

They accomplish their early goals, working in relative harmony. They settle on allowed and disallowed genres, total length of time to prepare for, tone of the ceremony and reception. Thinking about it on the train home, it’s a strange contrast to how it was when they were together, argumentative banter disguised as flirting disguised as argumentative banter on and on in a nautilus so twisted that even they didn’t know which was the truth half the time. Whether it’s them or the situation that’s changed Felix can’t really say.

* * *

A week and a half later, give or take because unlike when they were together Felix is no longer beholden to counting the days between times they see each other, Siri interrupts one of the hundreds of songs Felix has haphazardly arranged by BPM. His rhythm doesn’t falter as she says, robotically: _From Sylvain Gautier. So do you think we should start putting a list together?_ There’s a pause, then: _Also from Sylvain Gautier. Like Ingrid and Dorothea are definitely going to want changes so I feel like we should get started._

“Reply,” Felix says, trying to focus on the beat slightly faded in his ears. “Yeah sounds good period. Let me know when you’re free period.”

_Ready to send it?_ she asks after reading the text back to him in the default voice it’s never even occurred to him to change, and he confirms without thinking. A pleasant turn of events from the time they were last talking regularly, when every message had been either composed thoughtlessly and regretted with the tap to send or agonized over for interminable moments with Annette, or Ingrid if she felt particularly patient.

The track beneath Felix’s feet rises up to meet him for the remainder of his looping miles.

* * *

He’s free next Thursday night, which is not necessarily something that would have been true of a younger Sylvain, and Felix is glad about it. Sylvain comes to his place, _Mine is a mess_ , he lies to cover whatever the real reason is, convenience or shyness or the persistent evidence of a one night stand he hasn’t had time to wipe away, because nowhere Sylvain physically lives is ever a mess. “It’s a control thing,” he had said and refused to elaborate on in an unusually unguarded moment one night while washing the dishes.

Or, who knows? Maybe he has a partner living there who he’s not ready to introduce to his ex-boyfriend yet. Felix doesn’t know. The thought doesn’t fill him with any of the pain he expects it to on some level, just a twinge of resignation and regret that he’s so lost the plot of his friendship, pre-existing, with Sylvain that he doesn’t even know if he’s seeing anyone. 

All this before the man himself even knocks on the door, same glasses, same semi-beard poking out from behind the same scarf wrapped around his neck. He waves a little when Felix lets him in.

“Hey,” he says, and at least that’s what emerges first, before, “Sorry I couldn’t make my place work. My nephew was over yesterday and I didn’t have time to fix the damage before work this morning.”

There’s so much to take in with that statement that Felix can barely decide where to begin. As he turns the lock, he makes a call. “You have a nephew?”

Sylvain’s smile freezes in place, stretching to awkwardness. “Oh, right,” he says. His hand goes to the back of his neck, rubbing the same old spot, where Felix still remembers that there are seven freckles dotted in a minor constellation under the ends of his hair. “Geez, I’m sorry Felix. It was stupid of me to be out of touch this long.”

Felix could say the same, should say the same, but he’s making the connection now and there are more pressing things to cover before they start drafting the tracklist. “Miklan’s?” he asks.

Sylvain chuckles, one guttural noise that settles in Felix’s stomach like a stone. “So you remember him, huh?” he asks, as though Miklan hadn’t been a long and first mysterious, then frightening, shadow over their collective childhood. “Yeah, he’s Miklan’s, from before he went to jail.” His face lightens, immensely, and his hand finally drops from his neck, like he’s no longer threatening to strangle himself. “The kid is great though. His mom is okay too. His name is Olly.”

“If it’s before Miklan went to jail, he must be… eight?” Felix asks, doing the math quickly.

“Almost.” Sylvain is fully smiling now, unwinding his scarf with a question in his eyes, where is it safe to set it down. “Sorry for dumping all that on you. Want to get to work?”

“Don’t apologize,” Felix says, and he takes his scarf and his coat, drapes them over a kitchen chair. They pick ten songs that night, a baseline for the reception, easy to dance to. Sometimes Sylvain hums a few bars and asks _do you know what I’m talking about?_ Sometimes Felix gets up and refills the tea they’re drinking, iced despite the increasing chill outside. Sometimes they smile at each other, something Felix remembers from before that still feels as warm inside as it did back then. Sylvain waves as he leaves, too.

* * *

Felix is the one to reach out next, because Dr. Cichol had said during their session earlier in the day that he seemed to be finding fulfillment in doing something for anyone else and isn’t that what he’s looking for? Fulfillment? So he calls. It’s Wednesday morning.

“Hey, stranger,” Sylvain answers on the fourth ring, not that Felix is counting but that is how he’s always been.

“Hi,” he says, surprisingly easy. “I was thinking. We had some momentum going last week. Do you want to meet up again and come up with another ten?”

“We have to, right?” he asks, chuckling, not ugly this time. “Imagine Dorothea’s face if her trusted advisors present her with a list of ten songs for her entire reception.”

“Let’s not even imagine Ingrid,” Felix says. Then, “You’re up early. I didn’t even think about it.”

“Just getting ready for work,” Sylvain replies, because of course he is. He’s 29 years old and he hasn’t seen a dime of mom and dad’s money since he was 24 and brought Felix home to meet them all over again in his new context. That had been one hell of a weekend. “So when should we meet up?”

Felix hasn’t planned for this, even though he made the call. He turns on speaker and opens his calendar. “We’re drafting some new designs this week at work,” he says, half thinking out loud, “so weeknights probably won’t work. Is Saturday afternoon okay? Maybe Sunday morning?”

“Sunday is good,” Sylvain agrees. The sound of percolating water bubbles up tinnily through his speaker. “I’ll text you my address. Make it after 10:00, though — I still like to go out sometimes, you know.”

“I can imagine,” Felix replies, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything about Sylvain’s life anymore where he used to know every detail intimately, nothing except that his eyesight is worse and his brother has a child and Sylvain loves that child, but maybe he can learn. Maybe they both can. There’s a lot about Felix that Sylvain can’t possibly know now either. “Okay, Sunday morning. See you then.”

* * *

Felix leaves work on time exactly one night that week, the same night he leaves on time every week — Tuesday, which means dinner with Mercedes and Annette. Ashe is there too this time; he is often, but not always, and Felix’s unspoken question is answered before he has time to toss his coat and gloves onto the rack.

“Felix! Come here and try this,” Annette says, flailing a spoonful of something around dangerously. Mercedes waves over her shoulder where she’s shepherding some vegetables in a stir fry pan. Ashe smiles up from where he’s on his phone by Mercedes, designated recipe reader and note-taker.

“Hmm,” Felix hums on receipt of the sauce. Annette grips the handle of her utensil, eyes hopeful. “Good.”

She cheers and Mercedes smiles, tossing the vegetables again in what thankfully looks like more of the jus. He props himself next to Ashe with a glass of water. “Ingrid asked us to do the menu,” Annette offers. Ashe presses his cheek to Felix’s shoulder in greeting. “Apparently none of Dorothea’s friends can cook.”

“Isn’t it early to figure this out?” Felix asks. “And aren’t Dorothea and Ingrid not here to try it?”

“We’re just coming up with ideas,” Mercedes says, cheerful and placating. “It’s just so exciting, don’t you think? It’s an honor to be asked.”

Ashe nods. His face wrinkles and unwrinkles the seams of Felix’s shirt, rumpled already from a day stretched out over the drafting table. “Aren’t you already working on your part too?”

Annette, predictably, gasps, whirling away from the stove, a flash of relief across Mercedes’ face at the safer distance. “What?” she squeals. “Felix! You have a part?”

“Not just me,” he says, and it’s not until he’s already saying it that he realizes it’s the first time he’s talked about it to someone who actually cares. Ingrid has carefully avoided asking, Dorothea’s only communication has been whirlwind texts from between rehearsals and sets and naps on the bus, plus one snap of her wearing the black boots. But it’s okay, he’s safe here. “Sylvain and I are working on it.”

Ashe’s head whips up so fast he almost catches Felix’s chin on his skull. Annette drops the spoon, and Felix feels his heart clench in regret at the loss of the sauce that might still have been clinging on. Mercedes doesn’t look up from the vegetables, but her brows are drawn as she says just one word, the one word they’re all thinking. “Sylvain?”

“Yeah,” Felix says. “Dorothea and Ingrid asked us to pick the music.”

“Hmm,” Mercedes hums, thoughtfully, robotically moving vegetables without purpose around the pan.

“The music?” Annette repeats, and she looks a little crestfallen.

“So,” Ashe says, like it’s a full sentence, but he continues. “How’s that going?”

“Less sage,” Mercedes announces, and it’s apropos of nothing Felix knows but Ashe jots it down.

“It’s actually… fine,” Felix replies, slowly, and Annette actually sighs in audible relief, brightening up again, bending to pick up the fallen utensil. “I kind of forgot what a good team we used to be.”

“I hated Smash matches with you two,” Ashe admits. “Please tell me you’re shouting at him less now though.”

“So far,” Felix replies, deadpan as usual, and when they grin at him, a gallery of little renaissance cherubs, he smiles right back.

* * *

“Remember that one we heard that one time at that house part in Itha?”

Sylvain has a cigarette in his hand, exhaling and ashing into a pottery dish he’s holding precariously out of his cracked-open living room window. Sylvain’s place on a Sunday morning is light with wintry sun and drafty with the breeze blowing his smoke ruthlessly back in. Felix doesn’t really mind, not like he used to when he was younger and fussier and, probably, clinging more tenaciously to his own long and healthy life.

“Be more specific,” he says, leaning forward in the chair Sylvain offered him. It’s one of the on-trend molded types with the wooden legs that looks like an upjumped piece of IKEA furniture, but it’s surprisingly not uncomfortable. Or maybe Felix just doesn’t mind a few hard edges. Either way.

Sylvain taps his cigarette rhythmically against the rim of the ashtray, humming on an exploratory tone scale. The house party had been a colossal disaster in all other ways, but it had been the first time Felix had told Sylvain he liked him. It was overall still a good memory, with a lot of half-drunk grinding and a long sobering sit on a curb outside the post-frat frat house propped up on their hands looking at what stars they could see and a very sloppy kiss in the pool of porch light outside the apartment where Sylvain’s old girlfriend had let them stay. Gwen-something, Felix thinks it was.

“I can’t remember,” Sylvain says after a while. Felix fruitlessly notes down an attempt at a visualization of the pattern Sylvain has been hitting most often with a pen on a napkin. “That was a fun party, though. It’s a lot easier to do stuff like that when you’re, like, younger.”

“Didn’t you ask me to come late today because you were going out yesterday?” Felix asks, but he’s not accusing and he’s not irritated, it’s just a funny thing. It’s nice, because Sylvain looks at him where the corner of his mouth is tipped up and smiles back, relieved.

“All right, Benoit Blanc,” Sylvain says, inhales once more, and stubs out the cigarette. “But that looks way different when you’re almost 30, right?”

Felix nods. He wouldn’t know, because he’s young and spry and also he doesn’t drink very often. When he does, his tolerance doesn’t seem to have changed much from the college days. “I can’t remember either,” he says, watching Sylvain close the window, thankfully cutting off the draft that’s kept Felix stubbornly in his coat and beanie.

“We had other stuff going on, huh?” Sylvain asks, and he winks when Felix looks up at him. It’s the first real indication either of them have given to what used to be between them, what still lies like a stream with deceptive undertow beneath the rickety bridge being built across their history. Felix almost flinches away from it physically, instinctively afraid to get too close to what used to feel like a flame, to disturb the calm they’ve both been feeling even throughout the dramatic increase of the time they’re spending together. But when he lets it sit for a moment he realizes it doesn’t burn anymore, not really. Things are good now, they were good in another way at the house party, and they got worse before they got better. It’s the cycle of things. 

“Yeah,” he replies, to encapsulate the series of thoughts. “Let me know if you remember it.”

* * *

_Was it Tongue Tied?_

Felix’s alarm wakes him from the kind of sleep that only those ground under the wheels of capitalism can achieve two weeks later, presenting the message to him as he rolls over to silence the beeping. It was timestamped from a few hours ago, not a good sign for Sylvain’s workday, he thinks as he reluctantly gets up to shower. By the time he’s finished, wet hair disrespectfully tied up into a bun, he thinks he knows what the hell the text might mean.

_Maybe. Work has been hell — play it for me this weekend and I’ll let you know._

On the train, his phone buzzes again.

_You could just look on Spotify. You have Spotify, right?_

Felix is still getting used to getting texts from Sylvain that don’t have emojis sprinkled throughout them, eggplant or otherwise, so as he takes a moment to determine the emotional tone his phone goes off one more time.

_Totally kidding. Sure, same time same place?_

_Okay._

* * *

It turns out it had been Tongue Tied that night at the house party. Ironic considering how things turned out.

“Felix, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Dorothea crows on FaceTime. Her text from that morning had morosely described a drive between the Alliance and the Empire dotted with _nothing but grain. Like, how much grain do we as a society even need?_ and Felix had recklessly offered to contribute to her entertainment.

“Don’t flatter me,” he replies. “How’s the tour going?”

“You mean you’re not religiously following the press coverage?” she pouts, as if she actually expects that from anyone who knows her. “It’s amazing. Just like every tour I do. I’m a performer, Felix.” She emphasizes each syllable with a wave of her finger. The rock Ingrid gave her glints in the light flitting through the windows of the bus. They’re going fast.

“Sure, Dorothea,” he says. “Are the boots wowing the crowds?”

“They’re my partners in crime, count on that,” she says, grinning. “So, are you mad at me about the music?”

Felix furrows his brow. “Your music?” he asks.

She rolls her eyes, and he thinks he sees the flash of a passing tree reflected in them. “The music. For the wedding? I thought you’d still be irrationally mad at Ingrid and me for making you and Sylvain actually talk to each other like adults instead of avoiding each other like this is high school all over again.”

“My favorite of your many good qualities is your sensitivity,” Felix echoes, and Dorothea laughs, melodic and loud like she always is.

“All right,” she says, and she cocks her head. “How’s it going? You two still fighting all the time?”

“No, actually,” Felix says. “Things are… better. We’re actually making progress.”

“Oh, good!” Dorothea exclaims, and on the surface her smile is pleased at the task she assigned getting done, but underneath Felix thinks he might pick up on something else, but her expression is a chameleon and it all blends together in the end. “Will Ingrid have something to look at soon?”

“Take it easy,” he replies, taking another bite of his hot and sour soup. “We’re both busy, we haven’t had a lot of time to get things done.”

“I’m just so curious to see what you two can come up with,” she says, morphing to a grin. “You know, music is one of the most important pieces in the wedding. Ceremony, reception…”

“All right,” Felix says before she can continue. “You’ll be wowed.”

“I already am,” Dorothea insists, eyes wide with sincerity before flipping the camera to hold her phone up to the window. “Look how dull it is here. I always forget Adrestia is more than just Enbarr. It’s like a never-ending field out here.”

“Good thing Ingrid okayed Fhirdiad,” Felix says, accepting but not admitting that she’s right. “Knowing her she probably would have married you in a pasture somewhere.”

“Well,” Dorothea says coyly, turning the lens on her face again where she’s cheekily looking up toward the ceiling of her bus, “I’m not saying I have a sort of pre-ceremony pasture event planned, but you know.”

“You two really are made for each other,” Felix says dryly. “Queens of compromise.”

“Compromise is everything in a relationship, Felix,” says Dorothea airily, waving the hand with the ring for emphasis and because she still can’t get enough of looking at it. “Let me know when you’re ready for one and I’ll give you all the tips I have.”

It’s a fair dig. Since Sylvain there hasn’t been much in terms of stability, Felix’ father dying had thrown a wrench in things with Ingrid’s friend from work and they definitely weren’t at the point of Claude walking him through that, so Felix has gotten by with hookups and his general penchant for lone wolfishness. But it’s not like he needs to hear about it all the time.

“I’m getting another call,” he lies.

“Sorry,” Dorothea says, like she knows what he’s really saying, and he can’t stay mad at her for even a moment these days so he waves before he hangs up.

* * *

_Want me to pick anything up on my way? You know, since it’s like dinner time._

Sylvain is thoughtful on his migration to Felix’s apartment, like he always has been, one step ahead of whatever the person in his orbit wants. Felix misses that the most, the feeling that someone anticipating him brings, the comfort of not having to actually say what he needs because it’s already known. Sure, Dr. Cichol has helped him come a long way down that road but it was, in some ways, better when he didn’t have to know how to express himself.

_There’s a Dagdan place near Loog’s that’s pretty good._

Sylvain knocks on the door thirty minutes later, bag in hand, glasses and grin on face. “I got you something spicy and me something non-threatening,” he says, waving the brown paper and wafting a delicious smell in Felix’s direction.

“You should try something new every once in a while,” Felix replies, and then pauses, because maybe Sylvain has tried something new in the past two years, but Sylvain just laughs.

“You know me, permanently low tolerance,” he says. He still knows him. Okay. “Let’s eat fast, I’m feeling pretty good about some of the stuff I found past page one of the search results for ‘wedding playlist’.”

“Dangerous territory,” Felix offers.

They do not eat fast. Instead they talk, like they used to but better, like the best of times when they want to hear what the other person has to say more than they want to say their own piece. Felix tells him about the latest blueprint he’s done for the firm, Sylvain rants, waving a piece of meat speared on his fork for emphasis, about how complicated his nephew’s second grade science project is, and Felix is struck again by the fact that Sylvain has a nephew old enough to do a science project that he doesn’t know at all, that he barely knows exists.

There’s a pause after they discuss the merits of baking soda volcanoes versus different types of water for gardening, a pause Felix mostly spends wondering whether distilled is actually better for growing a tomato plant, before Sylvain speaks again.

“Hey, I know things are different and we’re different and all that, and I don’t want to make things weird, but this is nice.”

Felix chews for a moment, swallows. “Maybe it’s nice because things are different,” he says, and Sylvain grins at him, eyes creasing at the corners into a map to a place Felix remembers well.

“So you think it’s nice too,” he gloats from across the table, much more triumphant than he has any right to be. “I thought there were a couple times I saw a smile on that grouchy old face.”

“And what about it?” Felix asks. There might be, at that very moment, something like a smile on at least one grouchy old face in the area.

* * *

_I’m really glad you’re getting along,_ the text from Ingrid reads on Sunday morning, when she knows he’s already on his way, _because Sylvain is coming too._

Dimitri and Ingrid are at the booth, waving at him, when Felix gets to brunch and orders a third Bloody Mary to the table.

“Hello, Felix,” Dimitri says cheerfully.

“Are you mad?” Ingrid asks, also cheerfully.

“Hi and no,” Felix replies, although he notices they left the spot next to him on the bench awfully empty for a pair of friends worried he would be upset.

Sylvain is only a little late, and Dimitri is angelic as ever, and Felix still isn’t mad, which is good because it really would have soured Ingrid asking them all to be whatever the hell a bridesman is.

He finds Sylvain in the restaurant bathroom after brunch, after a hug to Ingrid that’s tight and fond enough to make up for a few they missed out on since Glenn, crying over one of the sinks. When Felix shuts the door behind him, Sylvain looks up, giving him a watery-eyed smile in the mirror.

“Ingrid and Dimitri left,” Felix says.

“I said goodbye before this,” Sylvain replies, gesturing broadly enough to encompass himself and the bathroom. “Sorry, this is embarrassing.”

Felix leans against the wall farthest from anything people can actually interact with, trying not to grimace at what he might be touching for the sake of putting Sylvain at ease. “I’m happy too,” he says. “She picked the right man of honor.”

Sylvain smiles again, like the sun this time, chokes a little, and puts his head back in his hands.

* * *

Sylvain ends their tacit ban on communication not oriented to their shared task with a picture of a trifold board decorated with the results of an experiment on how length of string affects sound traveling between tin cans.

_He didn’t win because the judging is rigged._

_And because some rich kid’s parents helped him build some fancy rocket supposedly powered by baking soda._

The corners of Felix’s mouth twitch.

_Weren’t you basically that rich kid at every science fair in Faerghus?_

The reply is a single emoji, but it’s expressive enough to get the point across.

* * *

“How big should Ingrid’s bachelorette be?”

“Save that for when Dimitri is here to contribute,” Felix says, waving his phone and the not long enough list on the Notes app in Sylvain’s face. “We have a job to do, in case you forgot.”

“I didn’t,” Sylvain sighs. “If a wedding is this much work I’m just asking Byleth to sign the paper when my time comes.”

Not married yet, then. And likely not thinking about it. Felix doesn’t know exactly what to do with the occurrence of that train of thought and his reaction to it so he puts it aside for now. “If you’re anything like Ingrid and Dorothea you’ll get a bunch of other people to plan it for you,” he says, leaning back against his chair and reopening Spotify. “Now focus. We’re only at 35 and we haven't even started the ceremony music.”

“We would be higher if the women of the hour hadn’t nixed so many in the last review session,” Sylvain grumbles. “I thought Let’s Get It On would be a good choice.”

“You and you alone,” Felix retorts. Sylvain just laughs.

* * *

They still meet to update the list, but they also send songs one-off now that their message thread is more than just scheduling.

_What about this one?_

_What do you think of this?_

_Isn’t this romantic?_ 🥺

That one earns an eye roll. Winter comes and goes. At some point they start hanging out just for the sake of spending time together, and for as long as he can Felix continues to live an unexamined life.

* * *

“It’s nice to have you and Sylvain friendly again,” Dimitri offers, socially clueless as ever, over the record blaring from ingrid’s living room. It’s just the three of them, music and pizza before they cram onto her loveseat for the GMU volleyball team’s season opener. Ingrid hosts, as always, because she insists on a ridiculously comprehensive cable package to keep her entertained while Dorothea is on tour. Felix doesn’t really care as long as he has somewhere to watch the Dragons hopefully crush whoever they’re playing.

“Is it?” Felix asks through a mouthful of pepperoni. Ingrid grimaces. “It’s nice being friendly again.”

“Seems like you’re getting along well,” Dimitri presses. Felix frowns at that because Dimitri is a good friend and a good person and also deeply uncurious.

“Yes,” Felix confirms slowly.

“It just… reminds me of when we were younger,” Dimitri says, formally, and then less formally, “Are you thinking of getting back together?”

Ingrid and Felix have always been the touchiest relationship in the group, the most likely to disagree or snap at each other or take opposite sides in a group discussion, but at that their wide eyes and hanging jaws are in perfect synchronization.

“Dimitri!” she exclaims.

“What?” Felix asks, affect as flat as he can get it.

“I am sorry,” Dimitri says, happily. “I did not think you would mind me asking.”

“How long have you two known each other? And you thought Felix wouldn’t mind you asking a personal question?” Ingrid snaps. Some part of Felix wants to disagree but she’s not wrong.

Dimitri shrugs, and his shoulders are broad under the old GMU hoodie. “Have you not noticed?” he asks her, taking another bite, chewing and swallowing leisurely without a care in the world and in complete disregard of Felix and Ingrid’s raised eyebrows. “Things are different now for Felix.”

“They’re not that different,” Felix says, but there are some things that are, after all. He doesn’t mind an embarrassing question sometimes, and he doesn’t complain out loud about Ingrid’s folky record choices, and he doesn’t think constantly, consciously, about getting back together with Sylvain, not the way he used to when they first broke up, when every memory of him felt like a hot knife, fresh and painful. Nothing is painful now.

“As I said,” Dimitri crows to Ingrid, who is glaring at Felix now as though by not getting irritated he has personally wronged her. “So? Are you?”

Ingrid stops glaring after that, because Felix’s answering look is measured to slice through Dimitri’s unflappable politeness and cut right down to the core. The Dragons win every set in the match.

* * *

“Wow.”

It’s one word but it sends the entire thing spinning on its head, drifting out of the shallow and unruffled waters they’ve been sailing on so far into something deep. But still… it’s still. Felix feels the ground move under him but it’s like it’s slotting into place, not like it’s opening up to swallow him or shaking him to rattle his brain. He can see Sylvain reflected in the mirror in front of him, eyes wide in a way that spells _uh oh_ clear as day even behind his glasses. He thinks Dimitri and Ingrid have tears in their eyes, Dorothea is fanning herself, and Yuri, the only man in Dorothea’s bridal party and therefore the only one along for the ride today, couldn’t be less interested which might normally ruffle Felix but all he’s looking at is Sylvain, even as the others surround him. Sylvain like he’s walking out of Felix’s bedroom in the morning, watching him wash his face in the reflection from the bathroom and in awe that he can see him like that at all. Sylvain like his eyes in the rearview, driving the four of them to some bar he could talk his way into where they don’t look too closely at IDs, like the joke he’s just made is an inside line between him and Felix, like Dimitri and Ingrid wouldn’t understand even if they tried. Sylvain like his mouth dropped open in the fogged reflection of the mirror they’re pressed up against in a dressing room they will never be invited back to, locking his eyes with Felix’s like they’re looking at each other through a telescope.

“The color is perfect,” Ingrid says, and only her hand soft on his shoulder is enough to break the spell that cuts out anything else on earth.

“Wow, there’s a hot guy in there after all, under the layers of not giving a shit about what other people think.” Dorothea offers her opinion next, but she winks at his reflection where its eyes track between brides. Brides. What an interesting context for the two of them. He smiles and lets Dorothea think it’s her flattery making its way to him.

Yuri complains to Dorothea that the near-green black is far from his color, but he preens in the mirror too and they seem to enjoy a mutual bitchiness with each other. It must be a known commodity, because Ingrid is laughing, the farthest thing from care in the world. Sylvain and Dimitri are trying on their own versions, Dimitri’s the same as Felix’s and Yuri’s, Sylvain’s just a shade different, which leaves Felix alone behind the curtain to change out of the suit and into the clothes he’d been wearing before suddenly everything was different.

* * *

_You up?_

It’s only 11:27, Felix is up. He says as much, and the typing indicator appears almost instantly.

_Sorry to sound so much like a fuckboy, lol._

_Ingrid and Dorothea approved the lists — ceremony reception AND alternates._

Felix exhales, long and slowly the way Dr. Cichol instructed and through his nose the way Dr. Cichol definitely told him not to do, letting the lapping waves of uncertainty wash through him. It’s over. They’re done. They can still back out of the deep end they find themselves in after the undiscussed not-really-debacle during the suit selection almost a week of vaguely nervous no-contact later.

He rolls over to pick his phone up off the charger and sends his message at the same time that Sylvain’s new one appears.

_You don’t sound like a fuckboy._

_I’m kind of used to you sending me music now though._

Sylvain, braver and stronger than Felix always, sends another one.

_You know, like, so many songs._

Felix calls, because he acts instead of speaking but speaking feels more active than sending a message, and Sylvain picks up on the first ring.

“You’re fast,” Sylvain says.

“You could just follow me on Spotify,” Felix says, and Sylvain laughs.

“I’ll do that,” he replies.

“I’ll send things too,” Felix promises, less weighty but somehow scarier than the one lying behind them and in front of them and all around them, always.

“Okay, Felix.” There’s a pause. “See you Saturday for bachelorette planning?”

“Sure.” Another pause. The air in Felix’s bedroom, where he had been not-so-peacefully reading an email from his father he had scrambled to recover from his deleted folder two years ago now, feels like it’s settling around him finally. Then they both speak at once.

“See you then,” says Felix.

“Edelgard will be there,” says Sylvain.

“Sorry, what?” says Felix.

“Sorry, see you then,” says Sylvain.

Neither of them hang up. “Edelgard?” Felix repeats slowly. “On Saturday?”

“No, but maybe later. And at the bachelorette,” Sylvain clarifies. “They want a joint one because they’re stupid and in love with each other. Edelgard is Dorothea’s maid of honor so we’ve been working together.”

“Okay.” Felix takes that all in for a moment, same semi-Dr. Cichol-approved breathing technique trying to carry him through. “Dimitri…”

“Yeah, he knows.” He’s cut off before he can shovel his way deeper. “I told him first, Ingrid asked me to. He’s… it’s surprisingly okay. I think everyone is just really happy for them, you know? They want it to go well.”

Felix is silent for a moment, just thinking through the impact of Ingrid and Dorothea’s wedding in their group before it’s even happened. If his current self had appeared to his self of a year ago and said that he would be on the phone with Sylvain at 11:39 PM on a Tuesday talking calmly about planning a party with Dimitri and Dimitri’s estranged stepsister, his current self would probably not have survived the conversation. Yet here he is, flat on his back, breathing through his nose, talking to Sylvain.

“Anyway,” the man himself says, “just thought I’d let you know. I didn’t want you to be surprised.”

“I liked her,” Felix says, by way of defense, “when she used to visit for the summer after Mr. Blaiddyd and Patricia split up.”

“Me too,” Sylvain agrees, like they’re sharing a secret, like they’re making a pact. “It’ll be fine. See you Saturday?”

_Don’t hang up_ almost shoots from Felix’s mouth like a misfired bullet from a gun in the past, and he clamps it shut to file in the next session folder before he says instead, “Yep. Bye.” He has a little trouble getting to sleep, but only a little.

* * *

When it’s _later_ , they meet as a wedding party in the shitty dive bar where he and Sylvain had seen each other for the first time post-breakup. Petra and Edelgard are there already when Felix arrives, looking a little uncomfortable at the booth they’re crammed into in preparation for the additional bodies they’ll be surrounded by, but Edelgard catches his eye and waves, hesitant and familiar, from across the bar.

Petra is perfect, Felix learns even before Sylvain and Dimitri show up seven minutes late, lilting accent and hard-working and strongly opinionated about weapon accuracy in war movies set in Brigid, which is an almost scary overlap with Felix’s own niche interests. Edelgard watches their conversation with the shining eyes of someone who enjoys observing the exchange of two knowledgable people, but she may as well be window dressing to the discussion until a warm hand claps Felix’s shoulder and a warm voice fills his ear and empties his mind of all other thoughts, nothing but still, deep water in their place.

“Are you guys talking about swords?” Sylvain asks, and Petra laughs and Edelgard looks up with wide eyes even though she knows this is coming.

“Dimitri,” she says, and her voice is quiet but the whole group hears her, and then they smile at each other uncertainly and everyone relaxes a little too visibly but it’s okay, and the conversation revolves around a collective drag of Yuri for being late until he shows up a full forty minutes after the time they agreed on in the group chat.

“Traffic,” he offers in insufficient explanation. He already has a drink in hand as he deposits himself gracefully in the last empty seat. There’s a pause. “I don’t know what she sees in all of you,” he says then, mildly, then points to Petra. “Except you, you’re interesting.” Points to Sylvain. “And you. Well.”

Dimitri, of all people, huffs a laugh at that — Felix thinks it might be because he doesn’t understand what Yuri is getting at. Conversation and drinks flow. Felix’s arm presses against Sylvain’s where they’re wedged together in the booth. Everyone is smiling.

“Felix, wait!”

He pauses at the door of the Uber he’s getting into with Edelgard, after the improbable discovery that she’s staying in town for the weekend down the street from his apartment, turning to catch a blur of red that only stands out faintly in the darkness outside the bar, moving his way, sends an apologetic face and finger to the driver who smiles with more patience than Felix deserves as he steps away from the car door. Sylvain comes to a halt in front of him, deliberately held at a distance away, hands in his pockets and grin a little sloppy on his face.

“What?” Felix asks, but he can’t really help but grin in response.

“See ya,” he says, even though he already said it inside. Then he waves and Felix waves and in the backseat Edelgard is studying him.

“So,” she says, and her face is that of someone who can listen carefully and judge without bias, and before she even asks Felix knows he’ll tell her whatever she wants to hear, “what’s going on there?”

It’s a long story, it turns out, long enough that Edelgard gets out at his complex and follows him upstairs, listening to him still as he fumbles his keys against his lock while his other hand waves emphatically. When they’re sprawled out on his couch, heads lolled against the back close enough to nearly touch, he sighs.

“And when my old man died and I started going to therapy, it was like I suddenly realized it wasn’t just him. I was part of the problem. Maybe Sylvain didn’t want to commit to me because I wasn’t making it worth it to commit to me.”

“How self-aware,” Edelgard says, a little sly but mostly serious. “It seems like you understand this but usually no one person is the reason for a relationship ending. And who knows?” she adds, rolling her head up to look at Felix’s high ceiling, the entire reason he’s continued to pay ridiculous rent in his building. “Maybe it’s different now.”

“Maybe,” he agrees, mirroring her movement, gin hot in the blood at the back of his neck. His arms are folded across his chest. “What would it even mean to start over again?”

Edelgard is silent for a moment. “I think I’m falling asleep,” she says, and by the time Felix has stirred enough to look over at her, she has. His phone vibrates.

It’s Mercedes. _Did you get home safe?_

_Yep. Came home with Edelgard, she’ll vouch for me._

_Not like, went home with Edelgard. We were talking in the Uber so she came up with me. Now she’s sleeping on my couch. You know what I mean._

Felix is asleep too before he can read her reply.

* * *

Felix invites Sylvain to go running with him, because he’s seen Sylvain’s Spotify now and his cardio playlist leaves everything to be desired. He does.

Sylvain orders Felix to his apartment for a movie, because without him there’s no one in Felix’s life who he trusts to introduce him to actual decent films. He goes.

Felix asks Sylvain to show up to dinner with Mercedes and Annette, because if Ashe isn’t there he has to do all the clean up himself. He agrees.

Sylvain tells Felix Olly is going to be an extra in the OA High school musical. Like, if he wants to come. It’ll be a total shitshow just like every school play they snuck out of when they were in high school. He shows up.

Felix demands Sylvain bring over more Dagdan takeout, just because he wants it and Sylvain lives way closer to Shamir’s. _They make it spicier to scare you than they will for me_. He will.

* * *

The bachelorette is a work of art, perfectly combining Ingrid’s and Dorothea’s interests by taking place at a country-themed karaoke bar with a mechanical bull and any number of cabinet games involving shooting innocent virtual animals. Sylvain’s suggestion of the bridal parties dressing like strippers is shot down by everyone but Yuri, who seems open to the idea as he has seemed open to the majority of the ideas that have floated around their group, so instead they wear what Felix feels is ludicrous thematic flannel and jeans. Everyone but Felix and Yuri cuts them off into shorts. It’s a disaster. 

Edelgard calls the bar ahead of time to make sure all the regulars are there, the ideal crowd for karaoke, and in the group chat links fly back and forth for days on the best way to grip your thighs in a metal rodeo. Sylvain and Petra last the longest. Felix flies off almost immediately. Yuri doesn’t try, because he and Dorothea do encore after encore of duets on the stage even as they progressively get more and more drunk, the crowd cheering loudly each time. Felix can almost literally see stars in Ingrid’s eyes from where she’s watching in the audience, and eventually it gets late enough that Sylvain talks the blonde into doing a performance of her own, walking her through a nice easy rendition of Under Pressure where Ingrid can really flex her shouting muscles, to raucous applause from bar patrons. Next to him, on either side, Felix can feel Dimitri and Dorothea shaking with mirrored laughter.

After the fact they make their way to the field Dorothea had picked out all that time ago, lying out under the stars with horses neighing in the distance. She and Ingrid meander off to hoard the intimacy of their last night of mutual singlehood. Dimitri and Edelgard are talking with Petra, while Yuri and Sylvain trade stories about being middle management in their respective industries, which sounds awful enough for Felix to tune it out. The stars are bright overhead, like they might be close enough to touch. Glenn had pointed to a star before, the hand attached to the arm behind Felix’s head as they stretched on the grass somewhere else in time and space, and said it was lucky to wish on one.

“What are you thinking about?”

It’s Sylvain, leaning back on one elbow next to him. Felix looks at him, sees him, then turns back to staring up.

“Glenn,” he says, honestly, nakedly. Sylvain doesn’t say anything. Before he might have. Now things are different — Dimitri and Edelgard both said it. Dorothea laughs, he can hear it from their manufactured privacy, and his heart feels full to bursting. “Sylvain…”

“Hey,” he says, like he just sat down. The air is calm and clear. Petra is trying to teach Yuri a saying from Brigid with mixed success.

“I know this isn’t about me, or you, or anything,” he says, and has to pause for a deep breath in and out through his nose. Sylvain is patient. “But… I want to apologize. I played a part in things going wrong between us, whether I could see that or not.”

There’s a silent moment, or really almost silent because Yuri’s tongue is still tripping over the lilting vowels that flow like water from Petra’s lips, and Dimitri and Edelgard’s low voices feel like earthquakes with the change in meaning they define, and Ingrid and Dorothea are radiating an inaudible soft hum of happiness across the field. Above them shines the star where Felix has pinned his hopes.

“I think things went right where they needed to,” Sylvain replies, eventually. His glasses reflect pinpricks of light from above him where he’s looking at Felix, down in the grass, gazing back.

* * *

Between Caspar, Raphael, and Ferdinand pitching in, the setup goes smoothly enough that Dimitri comes to Felix’s apartment to have a mutual semi-repressed breakdown about one of their oldest friends getting married nearly two hours ahead of schedule. Dedue’s flowers and Ignatz’ design work complement each other perfectly. Mercedes, Annette and Ashe have the entire menu approved and prepared in storage the night before — the benefits of a small wedding, Felix has to guess.

And the music. The ceremony flows by like a stream, guided by the oar of Dorothea’s music professor’s beautiful voice. Next to him, while their friends promise to love and honor each other all the days of their lives, Sylvain reaches over and takes Felix’s hand.

* * *

At the reception, Felix resigns himself to a night outside his comfort zone the second Dorothea smiles at him when he agrees to dance with her. The DJ Ingrid found, a friend of her friend from work that Felix had dated once upon a time who is, unfortunately, also present at the wedding and looks just as devastating as Felix remembers, does remarkably little, the silver lining of which is that the playlist he and Sylvain have birthed gets its chance to shine.

He passes from Dorothea to Dedue and Dimitri in a ridiculous triangle, to Claude, the friend from work who clearly recognizes him and is entirely too kind to the guy who unceremoniously ghosted him in the middle of a traumatic crisis, to Petra who is expectedly quick and lively, to his chair where he drops, exhausted, with a second gin and tonic. Edelgard fans him from where she’s also taking a break, looking like a portrait in her backless forest green dress.

“You and Petra are impressive,” she says, smiling at him. “Mercedes was telling me she’s never seen you have that much fun in the entire time she’s known you.”

“I’m not really a fun kind of guy in general,” he replies, but even as she shakes her head he already knows that doesn’t have to be true anymore. “At any rate, she and Caspar are already giving me a run for my money.”

Edelgard laughs. “He has energy to spare, but you have a bit more… finesse.” She raises her eyebrows a little then, tilting her head toward a point off the dance floor, where Sylvain is talking with Dedue and a blonde woman Felix vaguely recognizes as Ingrid’s college softball coach. “You should ask him, you know.”

“He looks busy,” Felix replies, heart absolutely not in it.

She rolls her eyes. “Well, I’m not enabling you any longer,” she says, rising from the table and waving to Mercedes, who’s cheering on Annette and Ashe’s increasingly bizarre and dangerous-looking one-upsmanship on the dance floor. “If Ingrid doesn’t get you later on, I will.”

“Sure,” Felix says, shooing her off with one hand while they other tips the rest of his drink back. Everything up to this point has been easy, natural, inevitable, still water running deep. He makes it halfway to his destination before side-tracking to talk to Bernadetta and Ferdinand about how beautiful Dorothea looks. They only scratch the surface of their second topic, how stunning Ingrid is framed between Yuri and Dimitri in suits on the spectrum of color between her eyes and her wife’s, when the bubbly voice of the DJ echoes over the fading beat of the previous song.

“Hello, sophomore year house party!” And that’s all the intro he has before the next track begins and his eyes wander to Sylvain’s. And, wouldn’t you know it, he’s already looking back.

Bernadetta, unnoticed and sly, interrupts Ferdinand’sto ask for another Riesling, but Felix can’t look anywhere else as Sylvain jerks his head toward the dance floor, where almost everyone else is already moving.

They meet somewhere in the middle, and like memory Sylvain’s hands go to Felix’s waist, Felix’s arms over his shoulders, and Tongue Tied isn’t especially slow but inside Felix can feel his heart beating at exactly that speed.

“Hey,” Sylvain says, in his ear to be audible over the music. If Felix could turn his attention anywhere else he would see Linhardt and Yuri making some very gossipy hand gestures at each other.

“Hey,” Felix replies instead of looking around. He realizes before he’s thought about it that he’s smiling.

“You know, if I knew the tailoring was going to make you look that good I would definitely have asked you out again before the wedding.” Sylvain drops this bomb as if they’ve discussed it before, but even as Felix tries not to instinctively reel back from intimacy he realizes they didn’t need to discuss it, not the idea of it, because in so many other ways they’ve already both made themselves clear. “If I kiss you now though Ingrid and Dorothea are going to be furious.”

“Maybe you can kiss me later,” Felix replies, not nervous at all, and Sylvain pulls his head back just far enough to look into his eyes. Their hips sway together to the music, a lackluster camouflage.

“Is that a promise?” he asks, and Felix nods.

“Definitely maybe,” he confirms. Sylvain grins, lips back close to his ear.

“So,” he says, smooth and sweet as honey, “maybe I’m not the only one who’s been thinking it might be time to give this another shot.”

Felix shakes his head, letting his cheek brush against Sylvain’s with each passage back and forth. “I think we deserve each other now,” he says.

Sylvain’s eyes across from him behind his glasses are light and warm, a mirror of Felix’s own feelings and, based on the reflection he catches in the lenses, his own gaze as well. It’s better than it used to be, looking at Sylvain, indulging in him. There’s more going on in his face, more openness and more freckles and more lines around his smile and eyes, like a painting on stretched crepe. His body against Felix’s is just soft enough and just firm enough, a Goldilocks planet in his orbit once again after all the time away, and handsome as he is where he leans against the DJ booth bantering with the cotton candy spin doctor Claude couldn’t hope to compare.

The song is over too quickly, Mercedes, Annette and Edelgard descend on them and drag them into a group, the night spins away quick and perfect in a blur of soft light and a good time.

“Want to share the ride back?” Edelgard asks Felix like she already knows the answer, long after most of the guests have left and the tear down is done, Mercedes somewhere carrying the last of the food to her car, Sylvain bundling a hyperactive Caspar and a sleeping Linhardt into their own ride with Ashe sticking his head out the passenger window grinning like a dog in the summertime. Felix watches that scene for a moment with dim interest.

“Thanks, but not tonight I don’t think,” he replies. Sylvain folds Caspar’s arm into the car again and closes the door successfully, waving them off as they’re driven away.

“I don’t think so either,” she says, watching Felix where he’s watching Sylvain, laughing to himself, checking the time on his phone. She nudges Felix’s side with a bare elbow, jerking her pale head towards the smudge of red in the dim light outside the venue. Somewhere out there, Dorothea and Ingrid are together, married, two become one.

“Some party,” Felix calls out, lamely, but Sylvain’s smile as he turns to face him is bright enough to catch the moonlight above them.

“The music was killer,” he agrees, making his way to Felix, putting himself comfortably in his space.

“Going home?” Felix asks. A balmy breeze blows around them, but Sylvain still has his jacket slung over his shoulder, sleeves rolled up to the elbow over freckles and coppery hair that doesn’t even look goosefleshed.

“Maybe,” Sylvain says. He’s very close, close enough for Felix to feel him, an energy between them that’s been stirring up slowly for months into a fire, not to destroy but to melt and mold and warm. “I had another idea though.”

“Oh?” Felix asks, like he doesn’t know.

Sylvain grins though, the happy kind. “Yeah. I thought I might go wherever you’re going, make good on that promise you made me.”

Felix waves to the left of Sylvain to Byleth, their college chaplain, and Dedue where they’re endeavoring to bundle Dimitri into Dedue’s pickup truck to hopefully sleep off what is looming as quite an intense hangover. Sylvain turns in interest to catch the scene, which gives Felix enough time to take one more slow breath in and out. “Your place or mine?”

Sylvain cocks his chin, eyes back over his shoulder to look at Felix. “You’re getting good with the lines,” he says.

“I learned from the best,” Felix replies. The balance of familiar and new swirls around him.

“Let’s go to mine,” Sylvain says, smiling, pulling his phone back out, warming the night around them inside of Felix with his availability, his openness. “Talk first?”

Felix nods. “Talk first.”

Felix lets his hand press into the side of Sylvain’s thigh on the ride back, naturally, easy, and Sylvain lets him. It’s not a long drive and they say nothing as they get out of the car, as they walk up to Sylvain’s apartment, green door and jangling keys, as they step inside and Sylvain locks up behind them.

They’re silent as they look at each other in the dim entryway. Felix knows they need to talk first, just a little, just to wave away the smog in the air, but something fills him slowly with anticipation, not the kind that’s indistinguishable from anxiety, the kind that feels like a lightbulb slowly heating up at the root of his diaphragm.

“So,” Sylvain says, because he knows Felix and he knows that this is the difficult part for him, “I guess I should start with this: I’m sorry I hurt you. I know I did,” he continues when Felix opens his mouth to protest, and he’s right to cut him off. They have a lot to say to each other, now and at other times. “I knew I wasn’t ready to give you what you wanted, be who you needed me to be, but I kept leading you around anyway. It’s not an excuse,” he adds, hand to the back of his neck sheepishly, in shame, “but some part of me knew leaving you was gonna be the hardest part.”

Felix is silent for a moment. They both are. Then, when it’s time, he speaks. “I’m in therapy,” he says. Sylvain’s eyes are almost unbearably soft. “I started when my old man died. Things were really… difficult. But it’s helped, not just with that. Dr. Cichol is really good.” He takes one more steadying breath. “I knew too. I knew that not having you around would be worse than what we had, even if both options sucked, even if it was the only way to get here. To now. So even though I could barely shake myself loose enough to tell you how I felt, even though that wasn’t enough, I strung you along too.”

There’s more silence as Sylvain takes that all in, things they both know separately but haven’t shared. “I understand,” he says. “Of course I understand. I wanted to be there for you so badly when your dad died, but I was… scared. Olly came into my life around then and I was already dealing badly with the fact that there was a new person I couldn’t leave, couldn’t run away from. I was a coward.”

“I wanted you to be there too,” Felix admits, out loud for the first time to another person. “But I think now is the right time.”

“If there is such a thing as the right time,” Sylvain agrees. He takes one measured step closer, no pressure, just earnest desire to be nearer, and the anticipation inside Felix is a balm working through his limbs, loosening the tension, making him warm all the way through. “It was hard being without you. Kinda like missing an arm, honestly — shitty even after I got used to it, always in the back of my mind even when I wasn’t thinking about it.”

Felix nods. “Seeing you again, I… I thought it would be harder. I thought it might be like ripping off a scab that isn’t ready yet. But it wasn’t.”

“What was it like then?” Sylvain asks, voice soft, smile softer. Felix is the one to take a step closer now, succumbing to the mutual pull of gravity between them.

“Just… nice,” Felix replies. “Not nostalgic, not like old times. Like something totally new. Something good.”

Sylvain nods. It brings his forehead almost close enough to brush against Felix’s, and a tremor of something snakes up and down his spine, sends a lick of flame brushing against his stomach. “Like starting over, but better. Just starting,” he says. “I think we’re better now, Fe.”

The nickname is the warm curl of fingers through his, the heat of breath against his neck, the warmth of the sun digging freckles into Sylvain’s skin on the balconies of their old apartments, the tug of a hand in his hair. “Have we done enough talking?” Felix asks, and Sylvain smiles wider, eyes flashing behind his glasses.

“For now,” Sylvain says. His hand brushes Felix’s neck, palm over pulse, fingers at his nape, and when their lips meet it feels like coming home.

Not much has changed about this part. Kissing Sylvain still feels like the best thing Felix has ever had, he still knows what Felix likes better than he does, more tongue than Felix would have thought to use, less teeth but not too much less. Sylvain still knows how to make him gasp, how to shake him gently apart as he licks into his mouth, as his fingers move against Felix’s skin with a tenderness Felix never thought possible, neither from Sylvain nor from anyone else in his life. He lets Sylvain press him backwards, head resting against his front door where they’ve been standing this whole time, as if their reconnection isn’t ready to be completely let inside, lets him work his fingers into his hair, scattering a pin or two to the ground, lets his own hands undo the top buttons of Sylvain’s shirt to slide against the heated skin underneath just to feel him sigh into him.

“We’ve got time,” Sylvain says, lips moving on Felix’s with each consonant, hips hot against him in contrast with his words, “if you don’t want to go farther.”

“I do,” Felix replies, just like Dorothea and Ingrid earlier, breathing into Sylvain’s mouth, and they grin at each other with heat enough to make something entirely new.

**Author's Note:**

> and in the morning they woke up and had the first of many long talks unpacking their needs and boundaries and establishing healthy communication with each other. also, felix and edelgard would be friends and you can’t change my mind. thanks for reading!


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